Legacy of Kain Is Getting a TTRPG

The British publisher Lost in Cult is publishing a Legacy of Kain tabletop RPG that uses the MÖRK BORG system. Today, Lost in Cult launched a new BackerKit crowdfunding campaign for two new Legacy of Kain books. One of the books is a new encyclopedia detailing the world of the Legacy of Kain video game franchise. The other is Legacy of Kain: Scourge of the Sarafan, a new TTRPG book in which players take on the role of vampire hunters trying to keep the dwindling population of Nosgoth safe from vampires. The book includes six playable character classes, Sarafan weapons and spells and various monsters from the franchise.

The Legacy of Kain franchise is set in the world of Nosgoth, which has decayed due to the decline of nine pillars. The games follow several anti-heroes (Kain and his vampire follower turned wraith Raziel) with themes exploring predeterminism and the nature of free will.

MÖRK BORG was originally released in 2019 and is an OSR-style game that focuses on the final days of a dying world. The game features lethal combat and a unique aesthetic inspired by heavy metal music. Legacy of Kain: Scourge of the Sarafan is published under the MÖRK BORG Third Party License.

The Legacy of Kain BackerKit has raised £120,919 to date. A description of the new game can be found below:

Lose yourself in Legacy of Kain: Scourge of the Sarafan, a gothic tabletop role-playing game set in the grim and murky world of Nosgoth — a land of frozen lakes, bitter mountains and deep, sunless forests. Embody the warrior-priests of the Sarafan Brotherhood, an order of vampire hunters who fight tirelessly in a great crusade to keep the human population of Nosgoth safe from the growing vampire scourge.

 

[VelvetViolet]

LoK is imo a really weird choice to adapt into a ttrpg. It’s a character-driven series with worldbuilding that is provisional and has undergone a lot of rewrites between games due to turnover in development teams. The timeline has canonically been rewritten multiple times and we see several different timelines in the games. It’s a miracle that the story is as coherent as it is. Props to Amy Henig for accomplishing that.

So it’s basically multiple settings in one. Multiple eras, timelines… Which era and which timeline does the tabletop use?

Furthermore, the option to focus on the Sarafan necessarily limits the game to periods of Nosgoth where the Sarafan were solvent and Möbius was alive to lead them with his oracular sight (they were his creation, after all). Once he’s dead, they become pawns of the Hylden who want to invade Nosgoth and they clearly have no love for humans. (Also, does the time travel affect the Hylden or is the demon dimension outside of time? The Hylden suffer an agelessness and sterility for being there similar to githyanki, so it stands to reason…)

So are we going to see Nosgoth before Kain raised his empire? Will the guardians be alive? Sane or insane?

 

[Weiley31]

Apparently, according to one of the developer comments when somebody asked about playable vampires, they said they were looking into a a way of doing that.